Washington Post confirms Deep Throat identity

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LEFT: Former FBI official Mark Felt, now 91, has been revealed as the influential "Deep Throat" in the Watergate scandal. RIGHT: Felt at a press conference in 1981.Photos: Reuters, AP

The Washington Post said today that a former FBI
official, Mark Felt, was the confidential source known as Deep
Throat who provided the newspaper information that led to President
Richard Nixon's impeachment investigation and eventual
resignation.

The paper made its announcement on its Web site after Felt, 91
and living in California, talked to a lawyer who wrote a magazine
article for Vanity Fair.

"The No 2 guy from the FBI, that was a pretty good source,''
said Ben Bradlee, who had been the key editor at the Post
in the Watergate era.

"I knew the paper was on the right track'' in its investigative
stories, Bradlee said, citing the "quality of the source''.

Felt, the second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s, kept
his secret even from his family for almost three decades before
confiding he was Post reporter Bob Woodward's source on
the Watergate scandal, according to a Vanity Fair article
published today.

"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat,'' he was quoted as
telling lawyer John O'Connor, author of the magazine article.

Felt, who lives in Santa Rosa, is said to be in poor mental and
physical health because of a stroke. His family did not immediately
make him available for comment, asking the news media to respect
his privacy "in view of his age and health''.

Woodward, fellow reporter Carl Bernstein, and Bradlee, their
former boss at the Post, had long maintained they would
never go public with the identity of Deep Throat until after his
death.

Felt's family members said the account was true.

"The family believes that my grandfather, Mark Felt Sr, is a
great American hero who went well above and beyond the call of duty
at much risk to himself to save his country from a horrible
injustice,'' a family statement read by grandson Nick Jones said.
"We all sincerely hope the country will see him this way as
well.''

The existence of Deep Throat, nicknamed for an X-rated movie of
the early 1970s, was revealed in Woodward and Bernstein's
best-selling book All the President's Men.

A hit movie starring Robert Redford as Woodward, Dustin Hoffman
as Bernstein and Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat was made in 1976. In
the film, Holbrook's shadowy, cigarette-smoking character would
meet Redford in dark parking garages and provide clues about the
scandal.

The movie portrayed the cloak-and-dagger methods that Woodward
and Deep Throat were said to have employed. When Woodward wanted a
meeting, he would position an empty flowerpot containing a red flag
on his apartment balcony. When Deep Throat wanted to meet, the
hands of a clock would appear written inside Woodward's New
York Times.

The identity of the source has sparked endless speculation over
the last three decades. Nixon chief of staff Alexander Haig, White
House press aide Diane Sawyer, White House counsel John Dean and
speechwriter Pat Buchanan were among those mentioned as
possibilities.

Felt himself was mentioned several times over the years as a
candidate for Deep Throat, but he regularly denied that he was the
source.

"I would have done better,'' Felt told The Hartford
Courant in 1999. "I would have been more effective. Deep
Throat didn't exactly bring the White House crashing down, did
he?''

Felt had expressed reservations in the past about revealing his
identity, and about whether his actions were appropriate for an FBI
man, his grandson said.

According to the article, Felt once told his son, Mark Jr., that
he did not believe being Deep Throat "was anything to be proud of.
... You (should) not leak information to anyone.''

His family members thought otherwise, and persuaded him to talk
about his role in the Watergate scandal, saying he deserves to
receive accolades before his death. His daughter, Joan, argued that
he could "make enough money to pay some bills, like the debt I've
run up for the children's education''.

"As he recently told my mother, 'I guess people used to think
Deep Throat was a criminal, but now they think he's a hero',''
Jones said.

Woodward, who had visited with Felt as recently as 1999, refused
to confirm or deny, even to the man's family, that Felt was his
source, and wondered whether Felt was mentally competent to decide
whether to go public after all these years, the magazine
reported.

Woodward and Bernstein were the first reporters to link the
Nixon White House and the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic
National Headquarters in Washington's Watergate complex.

Nixon, facing almost-certain impeachment for helping to cover up
the break-in, resigned in August 1974. Forty government officials
and members of Nixon's re-election committee were convicted on
felony charges.

In 2003, Woodward and Bernstein reached an agreement to keep
their Watergate papers at the University of Texas at Austin. At the
time, the pair said documents naming Deep Throat would be kept
secure at an undisclosed location in Washington until the source's
death.

Felt was convicted in the 1970s for authorising illegal
break-ins at homes of people associated with the radical Weather
Underground, an organisation that waged a low-level war against the
US government, including bombing the Capitol building and breaking
Timothy Leary out of prison.